If we want to improve education, effectively deal with environmental issues, create meaningful jobs, improve health care and bring peace to the world, we can stop asking ourselves, what’s going to work best for ME exclusively and start asking ourselves what’s going to work best for ALL of us?

What’s going to work best for ALL of us in personal terms?

What’s going to work best for ALL of us in terms of business?

What’s going to work best for ALL of us in terms of education?

What’s going to work best for ALL of us in terms of the environment? And what’s going to work best for ALL of us in terms of peace?

Too often selfishness is disguised as altruism in a ME first environment.

When we ask ourselves life-enhancing questions like these we become consciously engaged in creating our own reality. From the time we start school, we’re told to “Sit down, shut up and do as you’re told because I’m the teacher and I know what’s best for you!” This message is conveyed to us in both words and actions. In Catholic school, we’re told, in both words and actions, “You’re basically bad because Adam and Eve ate an apple from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil against God’s express wish.” In catechism, we were also told “You can’t trust the flesh (your body) because it will always betray you.”

Wow, can you think of anything more damaging or mind-deadening than being given messages like these when you’re young? It’s especially damaging when these “commands” are delivered with great conviction from trusted “authorities”. If we believe we’re bad and can’t trust ourselves, how are we going to be inspired to learn and how can we become anything but self-conscious, inhibited and closed? As a former public transit driver, I can tell you that many students in public education are suspicious and distrustful of people in authority, even bus drivers. On the other hand, Montessori students and home schooled kids were the most open, curious and friendly. To them, I was just another person, another source of information for a curious and open mind.

Every idea is a suggestion and if we tell ourselves we’re bad, we’ll act bad. If we think we can’t trust ourselves, we’ll dis-trust ourselves and support institutions that oppress us. The way out of this morass is to question our basic assumptions and start asking ourselves good questions. This way, we become imaginatively engaged in learning and “growing” ourselves. It might even help to redefine success. Currently, success is defined by how much money, power and privilege we posses. What if we defined success by how close we are to being who we love to be, doing what we love to do? When all we ask is, what’s going to work best for me, we psychologically disconnect from others and life becomes competitive, a matter of survival of the fittest. A belief in separation and competition attracts associated ideas like kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, predatory concepts we see dramatized in life, work and art every day.

How we define ourselves and the world around us forms our intent, which in turn, forms our reality. Until we start asking questions and stop assuming we know the answers, we will continue to recycle tired old ideas like, “build new schools” or “pay teachers more money” and children will learn, not that we shouldn’t do these things. But, why not take advantage of natural passion in education? If we truly want to support our children and help them create a more pleasing reality than ours, let’s make learning fun by teaching them how to ask questions and listen/look for answers. When we ask ourselves, who do I love to be and what do I love to do, we throw open our minds to every possibility and that, in and of itself, is exciting. And when we begin to figure out who it is we love to be and what we love to do, we have natural passion and spontaneity on our side, inspiring us to new heights of creativity and achievement . The desire to learn is built in to who we are. All we have to do as children, adults, parents and teachers is follow our bliss, be who we love to be and do what we love to do!

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (French Monk and Philosopher)

Visit The LifeSong Store where the world comes to shop for inspirational and life-changing ideas on T-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, hoodies and more. Change the world for the better with POTS! (Philosophy On T-Shirts)

A Nation of Hysterics

by Paul Campos

Lenore Skenazy, a columnist for The New York Sun, caused quite a stir earlier this month when she wrote about letting her 9-year-old son take a subway and bus by himself across Manhattan. The boy had been begging her to allow him to test his big city commuting skills on his own, and she finally agreed, handing him a map, a subway token, some quarters, and a $20 bill.

She didn’t give him her cell phone, nor did she secretly tail him as he sallied forth across Gotham alone.